shops like scottrade and ameritrade are certainly for amateurs. hey, that Riney guy is riding around in a chopper, somebody has to pay for that.
I don't really care because I don't have a Scottrade account...but Windows Vista was officially released exactly one year ago, yesterday. It was beta before that. Where are you getting 4 years? The extraneous program you have running is windows vista itself. lol. There are clients where i work that run Vista Ultimate on quad-core machines with 4 gigs of ram and they bitch about how slow it is. I can't believe you are running only 1 gig. Go to Best Buy or Circuit City and look at all the decent computers. They ALL come with a minimum of 2 gigs ram, dual-core processors. Now, they are phasing that out and coming with 3-4 gigs, quad-core cpu's STANDARD on Vista Home Premium computers ranging from $600-$1000. Throw some more ram in there buddy.
Please don't question the efficacy of my computer setup. I can assure you that I know more about software and hardware than anyone else in this forum. Of course Best Buy only sells 2 gig systems -- they know that idiots have to use the systems, so they need the extra RAM. Yes, Vista is a pig if you don't know what you're doing. Yes, the original SDKs and pre-betas were released four years ago so that software developers (like myself) and driver developers could prepare for it. Vista may have only been released a year ago to the general public, but the people who write Elite have had access to it for almost 4 years. If you don't know what you're doing, a gig of RAM is pretty thin for Vista. The system I'm writing on right now has 8 gigs of RAM. On the other hand, if you turn off a couple of useless services and get rid of the sidebar, the thing works great with just one gig. Sure, Vista's a little sluggish here and there with older processors, and I wouldn't recommend it for the casual user, but I am not a casual user. My trading machine is an older computer (3 years ago it was a top-notch system) and I am using it as a pure trading platform -- not for games or browsing the web or anything else. As to the possibility of its getting in the way of the software, I have a couple of observations. First, While using Scottrade Elite, RAM usage never went above 45% and processor utilization hung around 12 to 15% under normal trading conditions. Both metrics are close to ideal. Sctottrade Elite has a very small fingerprint and is fairly well written. GUI response was instantanious, and quotes were more responsive than any I've seen on any other system or platform. Second, on the same computer with the same OS, MB Trading's software also runs fine, although it takes up more resources than Elite. With MB, RAM utilization hangs around 47 to 48%, and processor utilization stays between 20 and 40%. The point is that even given the inherent inefficiency of MB, execution is far faster and more accurate than with Elite. P.S. I don't give a darn about Microsoft. I'm not defending Vista, which has some pretty crappy "features" (problems), just defending my expertise. I chose to use Vista on my older computer because it makes a good test platform for the software I give to clients.
Sullux, my advice to you is this. Don't use market orders at all. This opens you up to all kinds of unseemly fills. If the quotes are lagged, you will still get filled at whatever the price is in the real market.
My only comment is: Windows has had such a checkered past in terms of performance, yet some of you continue to use a terrible operating system (O/S) for an IMPORTANT application that requires the performance of a REALTIME operating system. What's wrong with you guys ? Good realtime O/S's: Win2k (yep, about 2x faster than Win/XP) Windows Server 2003 Linux Anything else: you are asking for trouble. Vista ? : BIG TROUBLE.
syswizard, do you have any proof that xp is not suitable for trading, or is this just an opinion? I've only been using pc's for about 30 years, so forgive my naive question.
syswizard is correct about the real-time OS summary. In fact, my in-house server for database and web applications (isn't that an oxymoron?) is Server 2003. On the other hand, as long as you keep your installation healthy, XP and even Vista will work just fine for even fairly active traders. If I were to compare response times on my trading computer, I would show that Windows 2000 or 2003 are about a twentieth of a second more responsive while trading. It is conceivable that over a full year of trading, this difference could cost me 10 to 20 dollars in slippage. Fortunately, I am quite willing to pay 20 dollars to be able to double my older machine as a weekend test platform for my software. I make two to five trades per day. If I was scalping, I would be on 2003, no questions asked. XP and Vista are tough to keep healthy. XP is a little more secure nowadays, so there is somewhat less risk of malware infection, but the risk is still reasonably high. If you are not a highly technical person, or if you have a dedicated trading machine, using 2003 for trading is not bad advice. Interestingly, it seems that 2007 saw Vista become more secure than OSX and (by some metrics) Linux for the first time. My world is crashing down around me. Anyway, Hopefully, Microsoft will keep this security model and FIX THE OPERATING SYSTEM. In the mean time, as you've seen in this thread, trade on Vista or XP at your own risk. Would there be money to be made in selling machines strictly geared towards traders? Machines with the correct operating systems and all of the junk turned off so that the machine is lean, mean, and reasonably priced? Hmm.
stock777, I can't use limit most of the time. I need to get into a trade within about a half a second of an event taking place on the market, and that doesn't allow for limit. It's worth the risk to earn a percent in 10 to 15 seconds, which is how long many of my trades last. On the occasions when I make an intraday swing-trade, I may use limit, but that only happens once or twice per week.